Every all-inclusive resort out there claims that you are not required to tip for services. This is definitely true of the luxury resorts, such as Sandals, Azul, and El Dorado, but at almost all resorts that are lower caliber, it seems to be expected.
Do you tip and if so, for which services do you tip?
There’s great debate about this and where you’re from seems to have a big impact on whether you do or don’t. I’ll generalize a bit here, but if you read reviews or forum topics in TripAdvisor on this subject, Europeans (including those from the UK) do not tip and at times get annoyed at North America’s penchant for tipping. They feel it changes expectations of resort employees so those who tip get ‘good’ service whereas those who don’t tip either get ignored or receive poor service. We've done both - tipped for nearly everything and on other trips, not tipped at all. The biggest difference in service was noticed at resorts where guests are predominantly North American. At higher end properties (Riu, Azul, El Dorado) there was no noticable difference if we didn't tip, despite the abundance of Americans at the resorts.
In North America, we tip for housekeeping, room service, valet, waiter service, bellman service, heck we even tip (some of us anyway) when we go up to a bar and order a drink.
London has changed a lot and tipping is fairly well received there now. But go into a smaller town in England or Scotland and if you leave coins on the counter for the barman, he’ll stare at you as if to say, “Ok then, what else would you like?”.
So it’s a bit of habit from home that we bring to these resorts.
The passion of the issue seems to be around the resort employee’s wages and what the cost of living is and whether we, resort guests, need to subsidize that.
Should we tip to subsidize wages? Should we tip because we do at other non-inclusive hotels or at home? Or should we take the resort’s inclusions at face value and pay for our stay and put away our wallets?
What are your thoughts?
No comments:
Post a Comment